Saturday, January 21, 2006

Daily Recommended Allowance

My soup bowl is backdropped by a rain puddle photographed on the same day as "Water Ballet." I manually masked out portions of the bowl in turn, then filled them with clouds (not posted), sunset (an unposted shot similar to the one here), and a polkadot wasp moth and digger wasps frolicking in goldenrod (though one has chosen to frolic in the clouds instead). A crescent moon hangs among stars copied and rotated from Orion, portions of which also form the border.

A week of play -- from nonverbal storytelling to Diva Night....

This coming Wednesday Mary and I will see how our bisque has come out. A new pottery store has opened up within walking distance of home, and it has a fantastic concept that I hope catches on. Damon, the owner, buys unpainted bisque pottery in a wide variety of shapes and functions. Customers come in and paint their own. An instructor and terrific staff are on hand, and the place is designed for group functions: children's parties, date nights, family fun days, etc. Last Wednesday was Diva Night (ladies only).

Neither Mary nor I had ever done this before; prior, the only bisque I'd dealt with was soup. (I was disappointed to see no molds of lobsters; I think "lobster bisque" would be a natural.) This was a local adventure: a social evening in a room filled with tables -- and balloons, and streamers -- all of us painting and chatting. We were all encouraged to bring our own wine (the store provided cheese, chips and dip, and chocolate-covered strawberries) because the bottles would be melted down and made into cheese dishes for us to take home with our pottery a week later, after everything had been fired in the kiln.

Art books were available for perusal. Sinatra recordings provided part of the background music. A massage therapist was on hand with a massage chair, which was wonderful because in addition to feeling great the massage fit into the 10-minute drying times between layers of glaze. Each of us got a pink or red baseball cap to take home whose sparkling letters spelled out "Diva," "Princess," or "Heart-breaker."

Small World Department: Not only is the store's proprietor from Brooklyn, but he and I had gone to the same high school -- about a decade apart.

Mary and I each chose dishes -- an octagon for her, a circle for me. She painted a sunset on hers; I painted a snake motif on mine. If all goes well I'll post photos once we get the finished product. Damon is thinking of outfitting the place with a pottery wheel for folks who want to make their own from scratch -- again, something I haven't tried -- yet.

Also this past week, I've joined a group on Flickr that features visual narratives told in no more than five frames. "Nature's Hand" is my first offering there:

I'll be hunkering down soon -- it looks like a large freelance job is heading down the pike. In the meantime it feels good to play!

An article of mine, "The Poem and the Journal," has just come out in Poets' Forum Magazine (Winter 2006, vol. 17 no. 3). The article originally appeared in the August/September 2005 edition of Of Poets and Poetry, the newsletter of the Florida State Poets Association. The text is somewhat readable in the large view, once you click the magnifying glass on it. It presents another argument of mine for keeping a journal -- in this case mine had helped me track down the 15-line poem (Joseph Payne Brennan's "When Tigers Pass") that helped spark what first became a 9,000+ word short story in 1985 and is now a 990-page trilogy draft. Credit for the photo of me there goes to Howard Harrison of the Citrus County Art League.

You've been having fun, and it shows everywhere through these whimsical, visually striking images. I've been by a few times, enjoying the vibrancy! And, you know, a cup of tea really does do that... open the sky, our world, up.